Last Fire
by Faye109
Summary: The Lost Boys and Max are dead, but as the truth sinks in, Star must face up to the reality of the carnage wrought on her former companions.


**Last Fire**

"One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach." Michael's grandpa paused, ludicrously composed. "All the damn vampires."

No one said a word as he let the refrigerator door swing gently shut.

Laddie clung to me through the long silence that followed. His arms around my neck were warm, but his small form still shook with reaction. I held him tighter, trying to lose myself in the restored warmth and life of him, pretending that the tears rolling down my face and onto his shoulder were ones of relief.

Then everyone started talking at once.

"_What do you mean_…?"

"Grandpa, you _knew?_"

"Told you there was some bad elements around here."

"I can't believe…. I just – I can't –"

Flickers in the dull reddish light revealed movement. My eyes had reverted to normal with the rest of me, weak to the darkness once more, and I could hardly distinguish the outlines of Sam's friends, Edgar and Alan, from the shadows.

"Still think we should make sure of them," Alan confided in a low tone.

"Cut it out."

Michael's voice held no menace, only weariness: a bone-deep exhaustion that I realised I shared. The orange glow cast the planes of his tired face half in light, half in shadow.

The Frogs looked at each other and then nodded once, in unison. "I think our work here is done," said Edgar, with such towering self-satisfaction that, for just an instant, I wanted to slap him.

"Star."

I set Laddie carefully on his feet. His little left hand crept into my right. With the other, I wiped the tears from my face, before the light could betray their shine to Michael. "You're…. You're bleeding."

Michael touched the dark smear under his eye. When he looked at his fingers I knew what he was thinking. But, "It's only blood," he said, and it was.

When I had pierced Michael's ear for the earring that hung there now, the single garnet-bright drop of his blood had been enough to make my mouth go dry and my stomach cramp with hunger. Only days ago. It felt like a lifetime.

Or four.

_YOU killed Marko!_

The memory of Paul's shout, filled with disbelief and raw fury and the need for revenge, haunted me. I had realised hazily, abstractedly, that Sam and his friends had found the Boys' secret hiding place and killed one of them. I had known it couldn't be David. But until the Boys came, screaming and snarling and diminished by one, I hadn't known that Marko had been the first to die. Asleep. Defenceless. Innocent?

No, never that.

Yet Paul had reacted in the way that, somehow, I had always known he would. Marko's loss had stripped Paul of his poise, his sense, and his better judgement. Loyal to a fault, he had always worn his heart on his sleeve: the loudest and most boisterous of the Boys, the first to laugh, the last to take offence.

And the next to die.

I knew what he was. I knew what they all were, and I hated it. I'd dreaded becoming like them. But Paul had been kind to me. Paul had tried to make me smile. Paul had made himself my friend. And listening to his screams as he died by inches - painfully, horribly - I'd felt a part of myself die too.

"…this mess in the kitchen! It smells like – it smells like I don't know what!"

Michael's mom was still talking, I realised. There was something at once comic and tragic in her monologue: a woman trying to cope with an horrific situation far beyond her experience with the air of a mother scolding her sons for leaving the house untidy.

And ghastly though it was to know the origin of the gore that streaked every surface in the kitchen, I thought that Paul would probably have found it funny.

"…and I don't know how we'll ever fix up this fireplace…."

Lucy's voice tailed off, as though the huge pile of stone under which Max had been buried represented one step too close to direct acknowledgement of what she had seen. "I," she began again, feebly, "I guess we should call the police, or…."

"No, mom," Michael said quickly.

"…or, the fire department…."

"No," he said, more forcefully.

Lucy fell silent. I wondered if her brave front would collapse.

"Never saw much use for cops in Santa Carla," said Grandpa succinctly.

I had to agree with him. The Lost Boys had never taken the least bit of notice of the town's authorities.

"Werewolves," I heard one of the Frogs mutter, and the other made an affirmative sound.

"Well, we can't just stand around here all night!" Lucy looked from the Frogs to Laddie to me without really seeing any of us. "Don't you all have homes to go to?"

I felt Laddie press close. He didn't. Neither did I. The hotel had been my only home for – how long? Months? Years? The time faded together.

"I can go," I offered softly. "Back to…."

I stopped. I didn't want to go back.

Michael found my free hand in the darkness and gripped it fiercely tight. "Mom, this is Star."

"Star." Lucy managed a strained smile. "Well, I…. Oh, this is just like a bad dream! I keep thinking I'm going to wake up any moment, but…." She stopped. Then, slowly, she said, "But I'm not, am I?"

Each subsequent silence stretched out longer and more painful than the last.

"Sam," said Michael. "You want to take Mom out of here?"

"Right," said Sam. "Uh – where to?"

"Our place," the Frogs said together.

Michael frowned and shook his head. "There's a motel. Beach Street." He fumbled in a pocket and then passed something to his brother: a crumpled envelope.

"Aren't you coming too, Michael?" Lucy asked. "And, and Star?"

"Soon," Michael promised, and I knew from his grim tone what he planned, and why he wanted his mother and brother gone.

"Got some fixin' up to do," Grandpa announced when they had left. Clutching his bottle of root beer, he ambled out of the kitchen towards the truck that still hissed and steamed in the centre of the living room. He barely shook his head over the big hole in the side of the house, or the shards of wood and glass littering the room, but ran his hand along the dented fender of the truck with a disgusted mutter.

Then he turned his head to look at something on the floor: something slumped and dark, too twisted and misshapen to be…to be….

"Dwayne."

I didn't realise I'd spoken his name aloud until Michael looked at me with unreadable eyes.

"Sam killed him," he said hoarsely.

I couldn't tell if the gruffness in his voice sprang from pride or horror, no more than I could tell how Dwayne had died. I could only think of how the most solemn of the Lost Boys had taken Laddie under his wing, letting him ride on the back of his motorcycle, solicitous of his safety there, even though it meant he invariably came last when the Boys raced. He and Paul had always treated Laddie with the rough-and-tumble indulgence of older brothers.

"He was…. They were…." I couldn't get the words out.

Michael gripped my hand more tightly. "Killers."

"Yes…no." I shook my head vehemently. "They were like us, Michael. They were just like us."

They had loved to laugh, loved to party, loved to race their beloved bikes. They had given me a refuge and Laddie a home and Michael a chance.

But no, that was wrong. David had had other plans for Michael. He'd used him to get to me.

Just as I'd used Michael to get to David.

"I never meant for this to happen," I whispered.

And to my shock, Michael said dully, "Neither did I."

It hung there between us.

"But we had to," Michael continued then, "didn't we? They'd have killed us. All of us."

_Never me_, I wanted to cry. I'd been afraid when the Boys had swooped down on the house, so monstrously transformed. Afraid that they'd hurt Michael…afraid they'd kill his brother. Afraid they'd take Laddie and me back. But never afraid that they'd hurt me.

"And I'd have become…we'd have become…."

"Yes," I said quickly, hating myself. "We had to."

"There wasn't any other way. To save th…us."

He'd nearly said 'them'.

Neither of us said anything. We didn't need to. We turned without speaking. Laddie still gripped my other hand as we crossed the debris-strewn room. He'd been with Sam and the Frogs before the end, listening to their plans. I don't think he'd understood what they meant to do.

The deer horns protruding from David's chest glistened in the dancing light, but his face was still and calm and beautiful, as I had never seen it. The electric charisma that had drawn me to him had fled with his life; so too the dreadful malice I had always feared. Of all the Boys, David had been the one to embrace most fully what he was. But even David had never wholly forgotten how to love as he loved his brothers, how to grieve as he grieved his brothers. They had taken their lead from him, the lost following the lost.

"They were kids," Michael said. "Just kids."

He turned abruptly, all squared shoulders and sudden wordless anger, and lashed out at the rubble that had buried Max with his foot, over and over, sending stones flying.

Grandpa watched without saying anything.

We burned them that night. Michael and Grandpa built a bonfire in the yard, stoking the flames high and hot.

By morning nothing remained in the ashes but a few warped and twisted fragments of metal, gleaming dully in the sunlight.


End file.
